Bob Kerr: Pure Americans stand up for a purer America

They are the gift that keeps on giving — paranoid, delusional, goofy. They are unwitting masters of self-parody.

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By
Bob Kerr
Posted Feb. 5, 2014 @ 12:01 am

They are the gift that keeps on giving — paranoid, delusional, goofy. They are unwitting masters of self-parody.

They are, of course, the tiny portion of gun owners who need to feel they are the gun-totin’ descendants of Lexington and Concord and the British are still coming. They want — need — to feel under siege, to nurture a sense of manning the last outpost of the patriot as the heathen gun-snatchers approach.

They would be an endless source of rib-grabbing howls, except they have guns.

The latest outbreak of the gun follies came via an alert from the gubernatorial campaign of General Treasurer Gina Raimondo. Raimondo’s campaign, like any other, has to endure the outrageous, the distorted, the flat-out nuts. This week, it brought our attention to a video making the YouTube rounds in which Raimondo is condemned for her announced support of a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines.

In the video, a guy in a sweater and a neatly trimmed goatee stands in front of a mockup of Raimondo in a British red coat preparing to fire a cannon. The guy in the sweater tells us that Raimondo has loaded the “red coat cannon” and is pointing it at the Second Amendment. He tells us she has thrown the Constitution beneath her feet and stepped on it.

The video, apparently produced to beef up attendance at a State House gun rally Jan. 19, is so much like a satirical skit that it’s difficult to imagine that the people who fired it at YouTube actually think it could be effective. Raimondo has done nothing more than propose sanity in gun laws. There is no threat to the Second Amendment. That exists only in the minds of those who need a conspiracy to keep them warm.

But it is all a part of the Pure America Movement, in which people feel the need to feel more American than the man or woman next door. It seems a fairly recent phenomenon, perhaps no older than the Obama presidency.

We see it in many different forms, some funny, some disturbing. We are seeing it this week in the bizarre reaction to the best of the Super Bowl commercials. It is a Coca-Cola commercial in which we see a rich panorama of the American experience while people sing “America the Beautiful” in different languages, including English.

It’s an outrage, an outrage, say the pure Americans. That song should be sung only in English, not in the “terrorist” language.

Uh, does “melting pot” ring a bell? “A country of immigrants”?

I guess not. American history started last week, in a Chevy pickup with a Pepsi in the drink holder and a shotgun in the rack.

Meanwhile, back at the video with Gina Raimondo the Red Coat, the guy in the sweater is hitting hard, claiming Raimondo is taking aim at every gun club in the state and every gun owner who feels warmly toward a weapon.

Then, the guy in the sweater delivers the gut punch, the charge sure to put any Democratic pretender on the political ropes.

If John F. Kennedy were alive, says the guy in the sweater, he would denounce Gina Raimondo.

But John F. Kennedy is not alive. And why is that? Could it be because he was … SHOT???